My Letter Home

Dear Mr. Everett,
I will be completely frank with you, if I could be anywhere else in the world right now, I would rather be somewhere on Nantucket Island. Since I'm one of the surgeons here, I get one of the worst jobs in the history of ever. My job dictates that I must, without a doubt, remove the arms and legs of the wounded soldiers who get shot. Gruesome I know, but someone has to do it, and I would rather it be anyone else than me.
The sound they make when I slowly saw through the bones is just terrible. Not to mention, the smell is getting pretty bad. For a minute there, I thought since we outnumbered the Confederates, we would surely win hands down, but now war is biting me in the butt. That part I don't understand, it bites me in the butt, while I have to remove others from other people. I'm starting to get a little bit paranoid from the cannons during cannonades.
Over here, when I have to take off a limb, I try my best to do it fast, and with as much precision as I possibly can. I feel terribly terrible for the people whom I cannot give chloroform or ether to, except a gag, and tell them, "Bite down." I've been called many things down here from people that lived through having one of their limbs cut off. That's another thing, I try my best to amputate arms and legs and keep people living after I do so, but these people just can't survive. I wrap the saw cuts up to as best as my ability will allow, and only like 9 out of 43 will live.
Since the weather has been getting really hot, the corpses of the deseased are starting to smell horrifying. I can't sleep the smell is so bad. Plus it makes it harder to slices limbs off of people. With so many people dying from unknown causes, I'm afraid to drink water when I get thirsty.
I don't know how long it will be until I come back to Knox, if I'm coming back to Knox for that matter. True, I never liked the school's food all that much, but now I would mortally wound eight men for a bite of the school's chicken. This battle has got me to the point where I would beg for a body bag if it meant a ride home.
In the mean time, I want you to do me a favor, please save me at least a bite of chicken at lunch.
Sincerely,
Presley
PS. I can't impersonate a colonel anymore. I signed a paper over here calling myself a colonel, and a general threatened to have me hung.